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Category: Photography

Take Better Photographs! Giveaway: Beautiful Beasties

I love taking animal photos: the four-legged, the six-legged, the winged. (Yes, I’m counting insects as animals, just go with it.)

But the biggest challenge is taking photos of my own pets. How best to capture the wriggliness, the silliness of a puppy? How do you convey the loving trust they have in you, licking your face or lying across your feet whenever they’re given the chance?

I don’t think I ever really satisfactorily managed to get Zooey’s personality on film. He was just too much dog for two-dimensions. And also, his black fur was impossible for the camera to focus on. I just lacked the technical skill to coax the camera into doing him justice. And it makes me sad, that I don’t have any really great shots for us to remember him with.

I have the same issues with Karma. Her eyes just sort of meld into her black face mask and I can’t quite record how much she loves those kids. How mournful she is every morning as she watches them walk to their school bus. It’s a little piece of heartbreak every morning.

I’m an OK photographer; I think I have a good eye. I’ve become pretty good at guessing how light will translate to the screen, and the zen of sitting with a subject and interacting with it through a lens is one of my happier pastimes.

Look how proud he is.

If you don’t know what’s in Jimmy’s mouth you probably should read the deer heart story.

I don’t have the technical skills to get a great shot every time, though. If I’m not blessed with the light I love (mid-day? night? Rainy? I’m screwed) I’ve forgotten how to compensate. I’m the biggest cheater ever when it comes to depth of field (I just switch to my telephoto. That is, presuming I’m not just using my iPhone, which I confess I do way more than I should).

I’m not a good photographer. To be a good photographer takes skill, a good eye, a bit of luck and the patience to take and sift through lots of pictures.

The quality of your results can be directly measured by the breadth and depth of your knowledge of the technical workings of photography.

– Jamie Pflughoeft, Beautiful Beasties

In other words, luck, patience and a good eye can only take you so far. At some point you gotta do the homework.

What I do know about the technical tricks and rules of photography I learned from reading photography books, behind the counter of Lincoln Camera during breaks and lunch hours. I looooove photography books, such a gratifying blend of tech geekiness and eye candy.

Beautiful Beasties is a photography book dedicated entirely to the visual capture of our furry and feathered friends. It’s a lovely book, as photography books should be: a feast of heartwarming, funny, breathtaking, wonderfully expressive animal portraits. And it’s full of practical tips to get the best shots of your animals— not just the digital photography techniques about aperture, lighting, ISO noise and shooting in the RAW, but also how to read an animal’s body language and evoke facial expression. Special difficulties (like how to photograph a black dog) are helpfully included, and there are great sections on post-production, photo organization and advice for those who are considering photography as a profession.

It’s geared, obviously, to the unique challenges that pet photography poses, but it’s a solid tutorial on the mechanics of photography in general. There’s always something new to learn.

If you could use a refresher on your photog technical skills (or learn them for the first time), or want to take your animal photos from ok to good (or great!) it’s a great read.

And here’s your chance to win a copy 🙂

Just follow the directions in the Rafflecopter widget (may have to click through if reading in RSS). Up to 10 entries possible if you’re into upping the odds!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

September 21, 2012
What is Enough? Lessons from an Ailanthus Webworm Moth
… and then, I have nature and art and poetry,
and if that is not enough,

what is enough?

-Vincent van Gogh

Sometimes I think you almost have to deliberately not see how intricate and lovely the natural world is. I don’t think I’ve ever had the thought, “I should take some photographs,” and not been able to find something worth capturing. Even when living in the concrete jungle, you can always find a bird, something growing defiantly out of a crack in the sidewalk or an untended drainpipe, an insect, a secret smile on the face of a passerby.

When you consider how beautiful a forest or an ocean is, this huge thing on the landscape too large for our eyes to even take it all in, and then consider how each part, each snapshot, contains its own beauty and wonder. Down, down deep to the microcosm, the plays of color and pattern on the smallest insect, in the detail of a feather, the crystals of a snowflake.

I don’t believe in a capital G God, exactly, but I believe in a something that is bigger and greater than me, because I cannot fathom that this could all be born out of chaos.

These are the sorts of deep thoughts I have while gassing up my car.

And finding a lovely orange and white beetle on the gas pump.

These roadside ruminations are only confirmed when I look the lovely orange and white beetle up in my field guide at home.

It’s not a beetle at all. This guy is an Ailanthus Webworm Moth, atteva punctella, a moth that tucks and rolls its wings under when resting so as to resemble an untasty beetle.

It’s a moth that disguises its beauty for safety.

It makes me sad. It’s not like those bugs that have large circles patterned on them to look like eyes, which are just kind of cool; this is an evolutionary behavior. And while that is admittedly pretty cool, I can’t help but draw parallels and form allegories. It’s what we humans do.

There are two lessons here today:
- There is everything, all around you, swirling in pattern and color and beauty you cannot even fully see or comprehend. Shame on you if you feel you have not “enough.” Be amazed at what you have.
- Though your safe face may in itself be beautiful: don’t be afraid to show your beauty in its full glory. Why hold back who you are? In what possible way is that not a disservice to you and those around you? Be you in every possible way. Be brave.
There’s a third lesson in there too, which is that I probably shouldn’t be allowed to blog on 4 hours sleep and two Blue Moons 🙂
August 16, 2012
Ranger Rick educational nature apps for iPhone and iPad, 99 cents
Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature.
It will never fail you.

-Frank Lloyd Wright

I got Ranger Rick magazine for years and years and years.

I’m going to go ahead and credit it for my ongoing love affair with nature photography, especially frogs (for no real reason I can think of, I just associate frog images with Ranger Rick) and macro.

The National Wildlife Federation now publishes three different magazines for a wider range of kid ages:
- Wild Animal Baby for toddlers is board board sized with nice solid pages to hold up to some serious love;
- Big Backyard is basically the same as Ranger Rick but with games and vocabulary scaled to the pre-K and kindergarten crowd;
- and of course, Ranger Rick itself, for kids ages 7-12.
(Where does a kid turn for his nature photography fix after age 12? National Geographic, I guess.)

If you have a NOOK, you can get e-subscriptions to save paper, but then how do you cut out pages for projects and wall decor? Just seems silly to me.

Anyway, the National Wildlife Federation also has some cute new wildlife apps for kids available for iPhone or iPad, another avenue to get your kids excited about learning about the great outdoors and its inhabitants. Right now they’re just 99 cents!

What Did Snakey Eat?
In this delightfully silly game, preschoolers develop thinking skills by matching  the shape in Snakey’s belly to one of the three suggested objects. Did Snakey swallow an umbrella? A rhinoceros? Or even a school bus? The giggles never stop when preschoolers see the crazy things that Snakey has eaten. Choose the correct object  and Snakey will spit it back out, then swallow something even funnier!

Click the Birdie
Score points, discover cool bird facts, and have tons of fun in Ranger Rick’s adventure-packed app. Use Rick’s special digital camera to photograph some truly awesome birds as you travel to wild places throughout the United States. Visit a Cypress Swamp, an Arizona desert, the Hawaiian Islands, and other fun locales. At each stop, you’ll meet three different birds to photograph. If you frame all three just right, your photos will appear in Ranger Rick’s bird gallery.

But look out! These birdies are quick, and you’ll need fast fingers and sharp eyes to catch them before they fly away. Keep clicking and soon you’ll be a pro at this intriguing game, which also teaches kids about wildlife and fosters a love of nature and exploration.

Raiders of the Lost Aardvark
Join Ranger Rick the raccoon on a wild ride through Africa in this thrilling detective game that tests your sleuthing skills. A rare mummified aardvark has been unearthed in sub-Saharan Africa, rocking the archaeological world. The archaeologist who discovered it, Jack Snare, believes that the aardvark holds the key to unlocking some of the world’s greatest natural mysteries.

Snare takes his aardvark mummy on a global tour of prestigious museums. But en route to the Natural Science Museum in Africa, his precious cargo is stolen! And strangely, after the theft of the aardvark, some of Africa’s rarest and most endangered animals begin to disappear as well.

Is the aardvark cursed? Was it never meant to be found? Is there something sinister behind the disappearances? Put on your detective cap and help Ranger Rick track down the clues to solve this mummy mystery!

Know of any other wildlife & nature apps suitable for kids?
June 17, 2012